We Are So Back

The University of Chicago is presently the greatest school in the world. Our academic departments possess great prestige based on the scientific and intellectual advancement they produce; we just got our 101st Nobel Prize a few weeks ago, and no other university matches the overall degree of academic rigor we maintain. But perhaps the strongest indicator of UChicago’s primacy is its cultural tolerance and institutional protections for free speech and open inquiry.

Over the past three years, I’ve visited countless universities: Harvard, Yale, Brown, Dartmouth, Amherst, Columbia, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and several other state schools. A troubling trend I’ve noticed is that when I’ve attempted to converse with students across the country with whom I disagree politically, they have a tendency to completely shut down. They don’t possess the capacity to assess an alternative viewpoint critically without freaking out or otherwise detaching themselves from the conversation. This doesn’t represent every single person, but it’s a very unfortunate and increasingly holistic truth. Interestingly enough, I have gotten to know several young people who have decided not to attend college, and this truth tends to be less pervasive among them.

The effects of this broader cultural shift have the potential to be catastrophic. Universities are supposed to be (and historically have been) centers of discourse and intellectual development. Now, they are better described as indoctrination camps, punishing perceived thoughtcrime instead of encouraging intellectual discussion between disagreers. These aren’t just glib, throwaway lines – they’re a description of a menacing trend that poses a genuine civilizational threat. At a societal level, if people can’t engage in critical discourse, they risk being subjected to propaganda, succumbing to the whims of groupthink, and ultimately falling victim to despotic, tyrannical rule.

The University of Chicago, though, stands apart from the rest. The Chicago Thinker was founded in October 2020 during a moment of cultural progressivism and deep COVID hysteria on American university campuses. Our founders Audrey Unverferth and Evita Duffy-Alfonso took a chance — they bet that despite being engulfed in liberal pedagogy, the pro-free speech conditions at the University of Chicago would enable them to dissent effectively. They turned out to be correct.

Our mission statement declares that “[w]e have a clear agenda: to defend conservative and libertarian perspectives in a community that is increasingly intolerant of such voices.” Whether it has come in the form of challenging the maniacal COVID rules regime, calling out radical leftist professors and curricula, trouncing liberal media regime apologists and masters of disinformation, or marching to defend our country’s honor on our own main quad, our imperative has always been to fight for the truth and to combat leftist orthodoxy at our university. It’s been a great pleasure and highly enriching to have been with the Thinker since my first quarter at UChicago, and it’s an enormous honor to take up the mantle as the next publisher and editor-in-chief of the University of Chicago’s premier student publication.

With our country’s recent electoral triumph, the Thinker is newly invigorated. We are now stronger and more committed than ever to our journalistic pursuits. I recently announced to the public that in January, we are set to print the Thinker’s first-ever physical edition, expand into visual media through Instagram Reels and videos on X, and renew our podcast.

Additionally, we intend to sponsor a novel event at the University of Chicago titled the “American Identity Summit,” in which dynamic speakers from around the country will discuss what it means to be an American, how that identity is changing, and how our leaders must act to bolster our country’s ability to foster continued prosperity.

Our publication has been blessed by God with the opportunity to be the voice of reason in our partially sane but still left-leaning university. We will continue fighting for the truth, for our country, and for the future of Western civilization. Our movement is stronger than ever before, and I can’t wait for you all to see it.

With Conviction,

Christopher Phillips
Publisher & Editor-in-Chief, 2024 – 2025